


Stranger than Fiction

by Paper0wl



Series: Rod and Shield [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Chuck freaks out, Episode: s04e18 The Monster at the End of This Book, Gen, God is missing, SHIELD doesn't take well to agents appearing in works of (non)fiction, archangel in hiding, family reunions are miserable things, tricksters always want the last word, whose life sucks more?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 17:25:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1573784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paper0wl/pseuds/Paper0wl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD considers the <em>Supernatural</em> books a potential security breach. As the unlucky person in charge of Handling Weird Shit, Agent Lux gets to go track down the author. Too bad her homicidal uncle is his bodyguard. </p>
<p>Or, why family reunions can be complicated when the devil's your daddy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Supernatural Security Breach

Kyria glared at the phone as if it had personally offended her and tried to massage the headache away from her temples. 

“I don’t recall you having the ability to glare something to death,” Phil remarked from the doorway. “If you have since developed that skill, let me know so I can update your file.” 

“Hunters are assholes,” she said with a scowl. “But we already knew that and I truly doubt you stopped by after a meeting with the director to check on my recruiting progress.” 

“He has taken an interest in your new department,” Phil offered. 

Kyria scoffed. “ _My_ new department? _He’s_ the one that ordered its creation. I’m just the one who got waylaid into heading it. That’s what I get for being the only certified SHIELD employee acquainted with things that go bump in the night. It took an omicron black for Fury to figure out that only one didn’t cut it. So, really, what’s going on?” 

“You wouldn’t happen to know a Carver Edlund, would you?” 

“Who?” 

He handed her a book. 

“ _All Hell Breaks Loose_ ,” she read. “A _Supernatural_ Novel by Carver Edlund.” On the right side of the cover was an ominous cloud of smoke. On the left was what looked like a black American muscle car. What caught her eye was the figure in the middle: a black-haired woman, her face in shadow, with an arm flung upwards to catch a bolt of lightning. 

Her friend and sometimes handler indicated she turn it over. “Late one night, Sam walks into a café . . . and wakes up in a ghost town. The Yellow-Eyed Demon is gathering his ‘special children’, and as Sam struggles to discover his purpose, Dean has to search through a 3,000 mile haystack before something else finds his brother first. Because the Yellow-Eyed Demon isn’t the only thing interested in Sam – and what’s coming could change the fate of the world. Coulson, what is this?” Kyria finished in agitation. 

“This is one of a series of books printed by Sera Seige at the Flying Wiccan Press: Publishers of Quality Science Fiction and Graphic Novels. We view it as a potential security breach,” the SHIELD agent replied. 

Kyria regarded the book in her hands as if it were a poisonous snake. “This series really follows Sam and Dean Winchester?” 

“Yes, although SHIELD appears in two of the books.” 

“Monument, Colorado?” she asked in a pained voice. 

“The title of that book is _Jus in Bello_.” 

“Are the depictions accurate?” 

“Unfortunately.” 

Kyria felt sick. “I’m a character in a science fiction novel. Please tell me it isn’t widely read.” Even ignoring the fact that she was a government agent partnered with spies and was around a lot of dangerous secrets, she didn’t like to acknowledge her parentage. 

“Luckily, they’re pretty obscure,” Coulson said blandly. “There are a couple dozen books that were put out before the publisher went bankrupt, but circulation is near zero. We’re tracking down the author now. Find out what he knows. You’ll probably want to get the Winchesters in on this.” 

She could only nod weakly. 

*** 

Listening to the brothers bitch about twisted fans writing twisted things about their personal lives would have been so much more amusing if Kyria didn’t know what some of those fans had written about her. 

“Oh, give it a rest, already!” she exclaimed, interrupting Dean’s latest rant about slash fans. “You think it’s annoying for _you_? For all that I’m only in two books, I seem to be a very popular character among fans. They’ve written me with Clint, even though I’m on record stating he’s not my boyfriend, with my former handler, and with _both_ of them at the same time. They’ve even got me with one or both of you. There’s also a few that pair me off with the Director, which is something I really don’t want to think about. No one in IT will look me in the eye anymore!” 

“You have an IT department reading fan stories about you?” Sam asked with a grimace. 

“Potential security breach,” she ground out. “I’m a half-human government agent and my biggest secrets have been published for anyone to read.” 

Dean joined his brother in grimacing. “Okay. Your life sucks more.” Her answering smile darkly promised retribution. “So . . . what about Chuck Shurley?”


	2. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

The nervous man who answered the door in his bathrobe wasn’t very impressive. Then again, Kyria had been fighting an annoying, buzzing headache since they’d pulled up to house, so she wasn’t feeling particularly charitable. 

“You Chuck Shurley?” Dean asked. 

“Maybe,” the author said nervously. “Why?” 

“I’m Dean. This is Sam. The Dean and Sam you’ve been writing about.” 

Chuck closed the door before he could say anything else. 

Dean sighed and rang the doorbell again. 

“Look, uh . . . I appreciate your enthusiasm,” the writer began. “Really, I do. It’s, uh, it’s always nice to hear from the fans. But, uh, for your own good, I strongly suggest you get a life.” 

He tried to shut the door again, but Kyria stuck her foot in the jamb as the migraine ate up her patience. “Mr. Shurley, we’re with SHIELD and we have a few questions for – “ She broke off suddenly as the noise in her head turned piercing. “No.” She shook her head, trying to dislodge the sound. 

“Grandfather, no,” she breathed in horror, taking a stumbling step back and raising a hand in warding. “I didn’t know,” she whispered in entreaty. “I’m not gonna hurt him. Please. Please, don’t.” 

*** 

“Kyria?” Clint said worriedly. 

She shied away from him, her fearful pleas shifting into another language that made his head hurt to try to listen to. There was some sort of feedback in his hearing aids, but he didn’t dare take them out. 

Dean pinned Chuck against the door. “What did you do?!” he growled. 

The writer stared with wide eyes and an open mouth and had to swallow several times before he could form words. “I wrote this.” 

Clint gave the nervy man a piercing stare, before concluding that whatever was going on with his partner wasn’t his doing. He surveyed the area with a sniper’s perspective and his brow creased as he noted the glass windows rattling minutely in their frames. Subsonic attack? 

There was suddenly a shrill, high-pitched sort of white noise that made him involuntarily clutch his ears as he clenched his jaw to keep from crying out. Clint had his gun out before the spots cleared away from his vision, aimed squarely at the man who had joined them on the doorstep, an arm around Kyria. 

“Sonuvabitch!” Dean exclaimed, holding his own gun. “What did you do to her?” 

“Stopped my brother from killing her, if you must know,” the golden-haired man remarked. “And you know shooting me won’t do a thing.” 

“It will make me feel better!” Dean countered angrily. 

Sam put a hand on his brother’s arm. “Dean.” 

With an annoyed growl and a death glare, Dean lowered his weapon. 

The newcomer raised an eyebrow at Clint, before deliberately ignoring him in favor of the shaky woman he was supporting. “You’re lucky I like you. ‘Cause otherwise you’d be a smear on the pavement right now.” 

“’m s’ry,” Kyria mumbled weakly. 

“Not your fault our family is chock full of judgmental asshats,” the short, oddly cheerful man replied with a smirk. “Anyway, here, take this,” he ordered, handing the semi-conscious Kyria to Clint and snatching the gun away. “You don’t need that.” The gun disappeared with a literal snap of his fingers. “Now, for a healer, Raph’s apparently got a monumental stick up his ass. And while I got him to leave off the smiting, unless I can talk him around, I just flushed all attempts at hiding down the tubes. So, important and unfortunate reunion happening. I’ll be back.” 

With a grin that didn’t reach his eyes and another finger snap, the man vanished. 

Clint looked at the three pairs of dumbfounded eyes and shrugged as well as he could before picking his partner up and carrying her into the house.


	3. The Gospel According to Winchester

Chuck didn’t look any happier after downing a large whisky and realizing they weren’t hallucinations. 

“Well, there’s only one explanation. Obviously I’m a god.” 

With an unimpressed snort and an eye roll, Clint commandeered the bottle and poured one for Kyria. He didn’t have a clue what just happened, but she was starting to look a little less like death warmed over, so that was a start. 

“You’re not a god,” Sam countered. 

“How else do you explain it? I write things and then they come to life. Yeah, no, I’m definitely a god. A cruel, cruel, capricious god. The things I put you through – the physical beatings alone.” 

“You’re not a god,” Kyria reiterated before Dean could say anything. “You’re a prophet.” 

The writer blinked owlishly. “A prophet?” 

“Like God’s messenger-prophet?” Dean said in disbelief. “Like the guys who wrote the Bible? You’re kidding me, right? Come on, he’s – he’s practically a Penthouse Forum writer.” 

“I am very sure,” she said tightly, glancing up at the ceiling. 

“This is about your freak-out, isn’t it? Uncle Sam giving you the good drugs?” 

“Dean.” 

Clint smirked. “You’ve been practicing Coulson’s ‘very disappointed’ voice.” 

“Good for you,” Dean said snarkily. “But, really. What the fuck. I mean, you start freaking out for no reason and then the fucking _trickster_ shows up. And then he’s gone and _he’s_ a prophet and what the _fuck_ is going on?!” 

Kyria laughed. “What’s going on,” she repeated with a laugh. It sounded slightly hysterical. “Gabe said it. Hiding just became a non-option. My family found me! I almost got myself killed by an archangel. Good thing another one likes me.” Clint took it back. She sounded more than slightly hysterical. He had other concerns though. 

“Someone tried to kill you?” he asked in an intent voice. 

She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. “As grateful as I am you want to protect me, Barton, I think you need to redefine your perspective. _Archangel_. As in, heaven’s most terrifying weapons. Human weapons _aren’t_ going to hurt an _archangel_.” 

“What about your arrow?” 

She stilled. Her eyes flickered toward him, cast in shadow. “That’s not something you should take lightly,” she said warningly. 

Sam looked between the two agents. “What arrow?” 

Chuck made a strangled noise. Everyone turned toward him. “I thought it made for a really great dark backstory! Sort of like killing Jessica the way your mother died for the sake of literary symmetry.” 

Kyria made a strangled sort of groaning noise while Dean glared at the writer and Sam looked like someone had kicked him in a very sensitive place. 

“I, ah . . .” Chuck withered under Kyria’s regard. She sighed and looked away and the writer took that as permission to explain. “Two years after joining SHIELD, Kyria presented Clint with the, uh, only weapon SHIELD had that was guaranteed to kill her, an arrow she fashioned herself out of a – a special weapon she had.” 

“The blade I used on the demon that killed my boyfriend,” Kyria expanded quietly. 

“Yeah,” Chuck said shakily. “I thought it was one of my better ideas, you know? A symbol of trust and friendship, built from the ashes of your past life. But it isn’t really the only weapon SHIELD has because you gave your handler a letter opener made from the blade from the first angel you killed, and – “ 

Four people stared incredulously at him. 

“I swear I didn’t know any of this was real!” Chuck exclaimed. “I’m – I’m a writer! This is what I do!” 

“The Winchester Gospels, huh?” 

Chuck yelped and jumped a foot in the air. The man from the doorway was back, lounging against the wall and eating a Snickers bar. 

“The Winchester Gospels?” Sam repeated tentatively. 

“Yep. Although if Kyria here has her way, Luci won’t rise and you two muttonheads won’t be Ground Zero for the celebrity death match to end to world. So, really, there might not need to _be_ a Winchester Gospel, but the script change hasn’t really caught on yet with the upper management, so it might be interesting to see how this all turns out.” 

“The – the – the – what?” Dean was at a loss for words. “What the fuck is going on! What does a trickster have to do angels trying to screw with our lives?” 

The trickster grinned, his amber eyes dancing with merriment. “Oh, Dean-o, you’re so much _fun_ when you’re clueless.” 

“Gabriel,” Kyria warned. 

“Gabriel?” Sam sputtered in awe and disbelief. 

“That’s me,” grinned the short, stocky man around his mouthful of chocolate. 

“There’s an archangel in my kitchen,” wheezed Chuck. “I mean, I _wrote_ an archangel in my kitchen, and I thought it was weird, and very Vonnegut, and approaching, like, M. Night-level douchiness, but I didn’t actually _think_ – “ 

“You’re still writing?” Sam interrupted. 

“Yeah, even after the publisher went bankrupt, but the more recent stuff never came out.” 

“Well,” Kyria began with a sour expression, “seeing how you're a prophet, I can't exactly make you stop writing, but Mr. Shurley, on behalf of SHIELD, I _am_ going to have to ask you not to share your writing with anyone.” 

“Thank God!” 

Dean gave a sheepish smile. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?” 

“Yeah, you did,” Clint said with a smirk. 

“Dad’s AWOL, by the way,” Gabriel remarked. 

“God’s missing?” Sam translated with more angst than Clint thought was strictly necessary. 

It was Kyria who shrugged. “Been gone for a while now. Though I’m leaning more towards him being a kind of benevolent, omnipotent energy being than actual creator-of-the-universe _God_.” 

“He _is_ the one humans have written about and worshipped _as_ God,” Gabriel countered. 

“True,” she agreed thoughtfully. “What happened with Raphael?” she asked, effectively changing the subject before the possibly-blasphemous philosophy made anyone’s head explode. 

“Oh, him,” the lackadaisical archangel said carelessly, conjuring another candy bar and taking a bite. “I think he might be the angel on top of all the Christmas trees, ‘cause he’s sure got _something_ wedged up there and it’s nothing fun, either.” 

Clint wondered if archangels-in-hiding hung around with billionaires, or if it was just a natural attitude that arose from too much power and arrogance and not enough human interaction. 

“Yeah, he’s not happy. Although whether it’s because I went off the grid or am fondly protective of the ‘Morningstar Abomination’ I’m not certain.” 

“Both?” Kyria suggested smoothly as Clint bristled over the insult. 

“Probably,” he replied around another bite of candy. “But he’s gone off to brood over the mysteries of life, or some shit, and agreed to not spill the beans for now so long as I watch over the prophet.” 

“Why does the guy writing our lives need a babysitter?” Dean asked. 

“Prophets get watched by archangels. And if anything is stupid enough to threaten one, archangels smite the threat. I haven’t gotten to smite anything in a while,” he added petulantly. 

“That’s what happens when you moonlight as a pagan,” Kyria pointed out. 

Gabriel very maturely stuck his tongue out at her, giving them all a good view of half-chewed Snickers. “You’re right though. Tricks are a lot more fun than smitings.” As if to emphasize the point, he snapped his fingers and vanished. 

Kyria shook her head. “Same old Gabriel.” 

“Who you calling old?” demanded a disembodied voice. 

“My uncle,” she called back. “And I don’t see him around.” 

“Very funny,” the archangel said, popping back in. “By the way, chuckleheads, you tell anyone about me, and I will make you wish you never heard of me.” 

“Why are we the only ones getting threatened?” Dean demanded. 

“Cause no one would believe the prophet anyway and my niece apparently trusts Hawkman enough to hand him an angel blade.” 

“Hawk _eye_ ,” Clint corrected without heat. He wasn’t NINJAT but he knew enough to accept trickster-archangels without blinking if Kyria said it was cool, and since Kyria had settled into bantering the way she only did when she was comfortable, he wasn’t going to jump all over the dude with the mocking attitude and superpowers. 

“Same difference,” Gabriel said with a smirk. “She trusts him with a weapon that can kill her, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. You I knew before you knew her. Besides, you keep your traps shut and there won’t be any problems.” With a wide grin he disappeared again. 

“That was an angel?” Sam asked hesitantly. 

Kyria snorted. “Archangel, but yeah. Only member of my family I’m not on vaguely homicidal terms with. We usually catch up once or twice a century or so. I’m sort of hoping that since I’m more or less stationary these days, he’ll be around more often, but that tends to be a mixed basket, so we’ll see how it goes.” 

“This was less freaky when I wrote it,” Chuck said, looking very dazed and confused. “Come to think of it, actually, not so much.” His hands tightened around the bottle of whiskey as he realized everyone was staring at him again. “I’ll be – upstairs.” 

“SHIELD will be in touch!” Kyria called after him. Then she sighed. “He’s got the right idea though. I need to get out of here before my brain catches on to the fact that I almost died trying to find out why my life is a book series.” 

“I hear that,” Dean agreed. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”


	4. Coping Methods (Because How is This My Life?)

Dean gave her another point for “your life sucks more” upon learning she couldn’t get drunk. 

“Technically I can, it just takes copious amounts of alcohol.” 

“Dude. Seriously? That _sucks_.” 

He was suitably impressed with her coping mechanism of choice: the shooting range. 

“One of the perks of SHIELD is unlimited ammo. All agents need to qualify with handguns, but Clint prefers his bow, Nat likes knives, and I’m kind of an up close and personal type myself. Although I generally have weapons available when I do that.” 

In the end, Clint taught Sam the basic of using a bow, Dean shot lots of paper targets to shreds, and Kyria did the same with silvery blades that seemingly came out of thin air. 

*** 

A few hours after returning to SHIELD, Clint called her down to his room. 

“How do I explain this to Coulson?” he asked. 

There was a giant bird’s nest where the bed should be. On the wall above it, was painted a pair of cartoon eyes. Kyria didn’t know whether to laugh or plot bodily harm to an archangel, and could feel a headache beginning to form at her temples. 

She was almost willing to swear the eyes were winking at her. Knowing her uncle, that was a distinct possibility. 

“I’ll get started on the paperwork. When I’m done, I’ll teach you how to ward away angels.”


End file.
